Coronavirus

When Chancellor Rishi Sunak extended the furlough scheme back in May, he committed more support than anyone expected. In June and July, the government continued to pay 80 per cent of employee wages (with a cap of £2,500 per month) and has also picked up the majority of the tab in August and September.  But as the scheme comes to an end after 31 October, calls have grown louder for it to be extended again. So far Sunak has been adamant that it won’t be, telling the House of Commons in July that it could not continue forever. But, as with many Covid-19 policies over the past six months, it

The government now knows that the country is losing the battle against Covid-19. Boris Johnson has announced a series of new restrictions on our daily lives which, he suggests, could last up to six months. After the first national lockdown, the government made clear that it was putting its faith in people to act responsibly, as well as its emerging track and trace system and enhanced testing capacity. Stopping the daily briefings was a particularly loud message, louder than any of the others that the government has since tried to communicate: that we were past it.   Indeed, the government should have been fully cognisant to the fact that people do not always act responsibly and

In a press briefing today Professors Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance showed epidemic curves for Spain and France — demonstrating how cases numbers have been growing rapidly, possibly exponentially, since August. As is often done when using case numbers by publishing date, the raw numbers are smoothed with a seven-day moving average. Drawn this way, the data shows a continued upward trend. But drawing the epidemic curve for Spain using cases by symptom onset produces a different result. We have put these two methods together on a single graph so that they can be compared: The epidemic curve based on the symptom onset date does not show the same continued

I’ve been bombarded with emails and messages from data scientists who firmly believe that the trend to Covid-19 infections, based on when a specimen was taken, is flattening or even falling. On the basis of that analysis, they are convinced the government is overreacting by threatening to impose new social distancing measures. And if you look at the government’s Covid-19 dashboard, you will be struck that the seven-day average for positive results is sharply on the rise, whereas there is a modest fall in the seven-day average of results by the date the specimen was taken. Now to be clear, those who are bossing this show – the Prime Minister,

One in seven Britons is now under increased lockdown restrictions, after a return of measures in the north-east added an additional two million people to the list. Those in Northumberland, Newcastle, Sunderland, North and South Tyneside, Gateshead and County Durham will not be able to mix with other households (outside of support bubbles) from midnight, while restaurants, bars and pubs will be subject to a 10 p.m. curfew. Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced the latest lockdown measures in the House of Commons this morning, citing a rise of Covid-19 cases in the area. Despite more than ten million people in the UK now being subject to some level of increased

Despite experiencing the largest economic contraction in over 300 years, UK unemployment figures haven’t budged for months. The furlough scheme seems to have proved successful in shielding many jobs from getting the immediate axe, while those who were made redundant often didn’t appear in the official figures as they were not immediately looking for work. But today’s labour market overview from the ONS shows they have started to tick upward: unemployment is now at 4.1 per cent, 0.3 percentage points up from last year and 0.2 points up from the last quarter.  Breaking down the rate by age, it’s clear the young have suffered the most so far: unemployment for 16

When the London Mayoral election was delayed due to the pandemic, no one was particularly outraged: the prospect of Sadiq Khan’s re-election seemed secure and Shaun Bailey, the Tory challenger, was nowhere to be seen. But that might be changing. Internal polling by the Tory party, leaked to the Telegraph, suggests that Londoners have not been best pleased at the city’s recent fate – and Bailey is only seven points behind, at 35 to Khan’s 42 per cent. This is quite the difference from a March YouGov poll putting Bailey at a fairly hopeless 23 per cent. It’s not that Bailey has been much more visible – but it’s easy

The UK economy continues to bounce back – but it’s the coming months that could pour cold water on a V-shaped recovery. The economy grew 6.6 per cent in July, according to data from the Office for National Statistics, with the return of pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and more non-essential shops giving us another boost back towards pre-Covid levels. But there’s still a long way to go: despite a record-breaking growth rate between May and July, Britain is still nearly 12 per cent below its GDP level in February 2020, having experienced a record-breaking contraction – the biggest seen in 300 years, and the worst of any major economy during the

Dominic Raab – This week is ‘the moment of reckoning’ for EU deal The Sunday interview shows return this week to general fanfare across the nation… The first government guest to join Sophy Ridge was the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who was asked about the prospect of the UK reaching a satisfactory trade deal with the EU by the end of the year. James Forsyth has written this week about how Downing Street puts the likelihood of a deal down to 30 to 40 per cent, but Raab professed a greater optimism that an agreement could be reached, citing the thorny subject of fisheries as one of the few remaining

Has the Covid ‘second wave’ already run out of steam? On 9 July, just when Britain was reopening the hospitality sector and other businesses, the World Health Organisation announced that the pandemic was ‘accelerating’. Much of the coverage in Britain also implies that we are possibly in the early stages of a second wave. But that talk is lagging behind the data. Globally, the number of new recorded cases peaked on 31 July at 291,691 and has shown a slight downward trend ever since. In terms of deaths, they peaked at 8,502 on 17 April and have also been on a slight declining trend ever since. On the worst day